On the same day that "Avatar" was officially announced as the highest-grossing domestic film of all time ($601 million at the box office and counting), writer/director James Cameron appeared on "Larry King Live" to talk all things blue and alien, as well as a tiny bit about the sequel that we all know by now is going to happen.

"[W]e have had some technical discussions of how we would do it," Cameron said on Wednesday's program.

That vaguely worded statement might jibe with rumors circulating on the Web that technical crew for an "Avatar" sequel are already being hired. One might have hoped for King to follow up with a probing question or three, but the CNN host seemed content to move on. Sit-down interviews with Cameron are hard to come by these days (unless you're Oprah), so King's interview represented a significant missed opportunity to reveal breaking news. Instead, King spent his time rehashing the cinematic past, talking B.O. numbers and giggling over a mockup of himself as a blue Na'vi alien.

What else was there to discuss? Well, we know from actor Joel David Moore that the cast have been involved in discussions about a sequel. And we know from producer Jon Landau that the pressure's on to jump right back into a sequel rather than start a different project. And we know Cameron has a pretty good idea of where the next story will go.

All or any of this information would have provided the basis for a compelling line of questioning, but it was not to be. Oh, Larry, what could have been! For now we'll have to wait, both for word from Cameron's Fox overlords and for the man who's made the top two highest-grossing films ever to get to work. "I have a trilogy-scaled arc of story right now, but I haven't really put any serious work into writing a script," Cameron told us in December.